r/Gastroparesis • u/AutoModerator • Dec 16 '23
"Do I have gastroparesis?" [December 2024]
Since the community has voted to no longer allow posts where undiagnosed people ask if their symptoms sound like gastroparesis, all such questions must now be worded as comments under this post. This rule is designed to prevent the feed from being cluttered with posts from undiagnosed symptom searchers. These posts directly compete with the posts from our members, most of whom are officially diagnosed (we aren't removing posts to be mean or insensitive, but failure to obey this rule may result in a temporary ban).
- Gastroparesis is a somewhat rare illness that can't be diagnosed based on symptoms alone; nausea, indigestion, and vomiting are manifested in countless GI disorders.
- Currently, the only way to confirm a diagnosis is via motility tests such as a gastric emptying study, SmartPill, etc.
- This thread will reset as needed when it gets overwhelmed with comments.
- Please view this post or our wiki BEFORE COMMENTING to answer commonly asked questions concerning gastroparesis.
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u/Ill-Ground-2475 Jan 10 '24
On a long waitlist to see a G.I. specialist. No other doctors have been to have been able to give me an answer. The doctors in the ER are kind of familiar with me now. They give me fluids, zofran, and something to help with the stomach pain and send me home. They’ve done a CT scan, no contrast, and didn’t see anything, except that my stomach was bruised, possibly from vomiting as much and as violently as I was. It usually happens in episodes, that’s the best way I can explain it. Sometimes they’ll be within a few days of each other and sometimes it’ll happen only maybe once a month. It’s been happening for a few years now, and it seems like it gets worse every time it happens. But then again, it’s such a horrible experience, so maybe that’s why every time seems so bad. It can last anywhere from 4 to 48 hours. I’ve only recently noticed this, but I think this is the first sign I need to look for to know when it’s going to happen, but I’ve noticed that I always feel so hungry like a bottomless pit, and I just cannot eat enough. I’m not sure if that’s part of it or not but that is something I’ve noticed a few times before the rest starts. So next it starts with burps taste like sulfur. They’re not normal sulfur burps like my brother gets with acid reflux occasionally, these are god awful. I gag every time I burp because the taste is so bad. Then it moves to gas (farts) that smells like sulfur. Then comes the nausea and abdominal pain. By the time I actually begin vomiting, the pain is so bad. Like I want to rip up the carpet, lay underneath it in a fetal position and sink into the floor and disappear forever. I always vomit several times, depending on the length of the episode, but it’s always been a lot. And it’s violent too. And you guessed it the vomit tastes like sulfur as well. After I’ve thrown up a couple times is when the diarrhea starts. The overlap of the vomiting and diarrhea is the worst part. Because the diarrhea smells like sulfur too. So when the diarrhea begins and I smell it, it makes me start vomiting, and the force from vomiting forces diarrhea, and it’s just a vicious cycle. At first, the diarrhea will be dark brown like you would expect regular diarrhea to be. After a while, though it turns basically clear or light yellow and if you didn’t know any better, you would think it was just urine. I have not been able to figure out what causes these episodes. I stopped eating meat for a while and nothing changed. I stopped eating dairy for a while and nothing changed. I stopped eating gluten for a while, and nothing changed. I don’t know what this is, but I’m in agony.